Thursday, June 15, 2017

Mobile air traffic control (ATC) towers mounted on the back of a truck will help Airports Authority of India to connect some of the remote airports recently revived under the government's UDAN scheme.

AAI has identified seven airports without an ATC and has invited tenders for as many towers, according to sources.

These seven airports are among the total 45 underserved and unserved airports revived under the first round of bidding for UDAN or regional connectivity scheme (RCS) routes and are likely to witness a spike in flight operations after five airlines were awarded 128 routes in March this year.

The seven airports include Utkela and Jeypore in Odisha, Mithapur and Mundra in Gujarat, and Neyveli in Tamil Nadu, according to AAI sources.

The reason why mobile towers are being deployed instead of permanent ones is to ensure operational costs are kept to a bare minimum in order to make flying affordable under the scheme, which is also known as UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik).
15/06/17 PTI/Hans India